It seems that there are many ways of bringing children to life in your stories.
The most obvious is your own, but those traits might seem so polarised they and others might realise who they are based on, with the distress that comes with it.
Then there are the children of your friends and relationships, definitely fodder for many stories because those children are definitely far worse than your own, or better perhaps.
It leaves you questioning where you went wrong, or why you didn’t get the manual when the hospital kicked to the kerb with this screaming bundle of joy, their words not yours.
So we start with real-life experiences.
To muddy the waters so they don’t get the impression you’re paying out on them, you can always add the traits of those you see in the shopping malls.
Shopping malls are a gold mine for behavioural traits, from the very worst tantrum thrower to the best behaved. For my money and proven time and time again, those well-dressed, very well-behaved children are purely evil.
With the tantrum thrower, what you see if what you get.
With the well-behaved, you spend all of your time watching your back and waiting for the knife to penetrate your spine between the fourth and fifth vertebrae. You just know instinctively they’re medical school prodigies.
Of course, there are one or two good children, Santa has to have a reason for existence, but they are like 1,000 ounce gold nuggets; very, very hard to find.
For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.
Whilst I have always had a fascination in what happened during the second worlds war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.
And, so, it continues…
…
Meyer was cramping, having been confined to a relatively small space in the box car for far too long.
He had considered when the train was moving to come out to stretch, but then the train had stopped several times for lengthy periods when soldiers had searched all of the cars.
There had been one time when he had almost been discovered, a soldier getting a little too close for comfort, and had been called away a few moments before he lifted the palings that covered his hiding spot.
Then, at another siding, the soldiers brought dogs, and one had stopped near the carriage sniffing and making moaning sounds before then doing what dogs do against the wheels.
Expletives and laughter from the soldiers, relief from Meyer. He knew if he was caught, the chances were he’d be shot.
Now, it was night, very, very late and the train had arrived at Florence and some time was spent unconnected the wagons then reconnecting to a shunting engine and pushed into a siding one across from the last. From the crack in the back wall, he could see the station platforms in the distance, where only a few lights were on.
Next to where the boxcar sat was a wall, or houses or warehouses he didn’t know, but safety was just 30 meters away. All he had to do was get from the car, and through or over that wall.
He waited, and during the next hour there was a train arrival, where the lights were turned on just before, during and after it left, back the way it had come, most of the time taken putting the locomotive on the other end.
It was going to be a problem if he chose to leave, and a train was arriving. All the advance notice was the whistle.
The other problem was the sporadic nature of the patrols, two German soldiers wandering up and down the tracks, aiming their torches at walls and windows, loading telling each other war stories and crude stories. They were bored, which would work in his favour.
There was, he noted, about an hour between each one.
Figuring it was about three in the morning after the second patrol had returned to the station, he came out of his hiding spot. He tried not to make any noise which meant the harder he tried, the more it happened.
Once out he peered through the rear guard’s window at the station and it was deserted. There were no lights up the lines where the wagons were parked. There was no sign of the shunting locomotive.
He went over to the door and pulled. It was stiff and at first, didn’t move. A harder tug loosened the track and the door slid sideways about 30 centimetres. He put his head out to check. The moon was out, and it was quite light, light enough to see up and down the track.
There were about 20 wagons on the siding. The wall ran for most of that distance, with what appeared to be an opening opposite the tenth or eleventh wagon. That’s where he would go.
He pushed the door open wide enough to squeeze through and climbed down onto the tracks. Once down he closed the door. If anyone had checked, it had been closed before. Keeping close to the side of the wagons, he headed away from the station.
About three wagons along, a light came on almost opposite him, illuminating the tracks,, the wagons and him. Several seconds later, a whistle sounded, not a train whistle but one like a guard.
Then a man yelled out “Halt!”
He looked back towards the station and could see two soldiers running awkwardly in the middle of the tracks towards him.
Meyer started running for the gap in the wall, keeping as close to the wagons as he could.
When he looked back over his shoulder, he could see they were gaining on him. He was still stiff and sore from being in that confined space for so long.
Another light came on further along.
He stopped and looked around. The soldiers were raising their guns.
He saw only one way out, and climbed under the train and over to the other side of the train, away from his objective.
He ran harder and was nearly at the end of the wagons when a man stepped out in front of him. He was not in a uniform.
Meyer almost stumbled and fell trying to stop crashing into him.
“Meyer?”
The man knew his name. He looked Italian, was he from the resistance?
“Who are you?” he asked in halting Italian.
“What is the doe word?”
Code word? What code word? The piece of paper in his pocket, given to him by the British officer. He pulled it out. “Winston.”
“Right, you’re the one I’m here for. Follow me if you want to live.”
The man then ran across the tracks to the opposite side, and Meyer followed as quickly as he could. Then just short of the stone wall, there was an opening in the ground where another man was half in, half out.
“This way,” he said, then disappeared down the hole.
The soldiers had been held up crossing under the train to follow and were now so far behind they were out of sight.
Meyer saw the hold, with a ladder and climbed down. The man who had led him there followed and put the lid back over the top.
“Where are we?” Meyer asked.
“The sewers. A little smelly, but you’re safe. For the moment.”
X is for — Xanthic. It’s the password, and to guess it, you have to know it’s yellow. The one person who knew the code was murdered
…
I stood in front of the vault door, recently installed, that, when opened, led to what we called ‘Aladdin’s cave’.
It was, in reality, just that; the gateway to a new technology that was going to change the world, the brainchild of Augustus Beatony.
We were not exactly sure what that brainchild was, except that it was going to be the next evolution in artificial intelligence, and the company, or more to the point, the consortium of public and private enterprise entities, investment of nearly a trillion dollars had diligently paid for.
The launch would be in three days, where everyone would learn what it was.
My guess, after spending the last five years handling the accounts, with almost as much secrecy surrounding them as the project itself, was that it was a computer, but not just any computer.
Many had speculated, some said they knew but wouldn’t tell, but the truth was, no one was sure. And Augustus Beatony was nowhere to be found to ask.
This development, discovered last evening when a delegation of reporters had arrived at the hall where Augustus was going to tantalise them, and us, with some non-specific details of what to expect, and found he had failed to arrive.
A search was instituted, people going to his residence, this university office, his work office, even his mistress’s residence, but no one had seen him.
The last anyone had was me. Two days ago, outside this very door, he had a special password that he was not going to share with anyone.
Including me, his most trusted friend.
Apparently, I like everyone else, could not be trusted.
And rather alarmingly, he stated that he was the only one who knew the password.
No one else. No one.
Aloysius Magreve, the man the government had appointed to oversee their interests in the project, and probably the only other person in the universe capable of understanding the technology, was standing next to me.
He had just expended a lot of energy and anger at the situation. I was not the prime target this time. It was Major General Fitzwilliam, head of the security detail, who was on the end of this tirade.
“How hard can it be to keep an eye on one man, given the resources at your disposal?”
It was a common misconception that the Major General had a whole army to throw at the problem. The truth was he did not. He was limited to six men and two women in rotation.
Augustus, on the other hand, was the Houdini of subjects being guarded, was as slippery as an eel, and was known to shake his bodyguards as easily as a bartender made cocktails
It’s not my analogy.
Major General Fitzwilliam was out looking for him. Well, not the Major General himself, but his men and women. They all thought the other was watching him. Yes, Augustus was very good at pitting them against each other.
“What does it matter,” I said. ” He will be back to open the door, and then the games will commence.”
“Games?”
“Figure of speech. He will tell us how it works.”
“You know what it is?”
“No. But we will find out soon enough.”
“You seem quite blasé about a one trillion dollar funded and unseen project that could turn out to be a glorified Atari console.”
The fact that Augustus had likened his project to just such an item was worrying in the extreme. And having heard Augustus refer to it as the world’s most expensive Atari console? I was more than a little worried that I’d given him too much attitude.
“He will turn up, don’t you worry. The man had one other fault: he loves the limelight.”
I barely made it back to my office before my cell phone rang. Major General Fitzwilliam.
“We’ve found him. I’m texting you the address.”
When I received it a minute later, I typed the address into the maps app and zoomed in on the location. An industrial estate on the edge of town.
Another quick search found that it had once been a thriving place with all manner of business, as well as a shopping mall, but a fire some years back turned the whole area into a ghost town.
Some said it was haunted, and others said it was where the drug addicts and homeless ended up, with a drug-related death at least once a week.
Our offices, the warehouse used to be there, but we moved five years ago when this new project started.
It was a twenty-minute drive, and I was the last one there. Fitzwilliam had brought a platoon of troops, and they were being deployed. What for, I was not sure, but it seemed to me they were prepping for action.
Magreve was standing beside the command truck.
“What on earth is going on?” I asked.
“Betoney’s cell came back on, and is in that building.”
He pointed to the one that had a faded sign on the wall above the door, our company name. What was he doing in our old building?
Two soldiers stood cautiously on either side of an open door, weapons ready. Five more were finishing kitting up.
“What are they doing?”
“Infra-red scan says there are three people inside. They’re going in armed and ready.
“Has someone told them they’re not to shoot him?”
“Don’t panic. The Major General has got this.”
The leader raised a hand, and when it stopped, the two men at the door went in. The other five followed. I just hoped they didn’t shoot first and ask questions later.
Seven minutes.
For seven minutes, there was nothing, and then the sound of Magreve’s communicator made a noise.
“Magreve, you there?” The commander of the team wasn’t the best at communication with civilians.
“I am.”
“You need to see this.”
“Is it bad?”
Silence then, “Get in here.”
I followed Magreve inside, where we were met by one of the soldiers, who had obviously come back to take us.
We went down several passageways towards the back of the building, the smell of waterlogged carpet, and something else. Death.
We came out into a large room, which had been a breakout area where tables and chairs had been stacked against the wall, and then in the middle of the open space, a single chair.
In it was Aloysius.
Dead.
He had died a very painful and horrific death, one that was very recent.
“We think the perpetrators are still here,” the officer whispered, “and the body is still warm.”
My God. Aloysius was dead. Just the true notion sent a chill down my spine. And the obvious question was on the tip of my tongue. “Why?”
“Because whoever kidnapped him wanted the secret technology. This is the result when a person refuses to give away his secret.”
I hadn’t realised I’d spoken the question out loud.
“Has he been…?”
“Tortured. Yes. And my guess is that he didn’t tell them anything.”
“It’s a bit late to be asking any questions or finding out what happened from him. If they got what they wanted…”
“He was kidnapped, brought here, a bit poetic, by some people who wanted to get their hands on the tech. Heart attack, by the look of it, and unexpected by the interrogators.”
“You can tell that how?”
“I recognise the work.”
I didn’t ask him to elaborate. I was a numbers man, not versed in the machinations of espionage.
A shot rang out very near to us, and then, shouting, followed by a volley of shots, one of the bullets clanged into a metal wall not far from us.
Both Magreve and I ducked. The officer headed towards the shooting.
This went on for several minutes until silence returned. Not long after that, major General Fitzwilliam returned.
“We have two suspects. It is time to clear the scene and bring in the investigators. This is a bad business, very bad indeed.”
That’s when Magreve and I were escorted out of the building, just as the first police and ambulance personnel arrived.
He was right. It was indeed a bad business. Questions were going to be asked, including the one trillion dollar question. How were we going to find out what Augustus Beatony did with the money?
If, in fact, he had not given up the password, and he was the only one with it, and the vault was set to self-destruction if it was opened any other way than with the password, we may never know.
And I knew who was going to get the blame.
Back at the office, a meeting was convened to discuss the situation. The situation was clear to me: Beatony was dead, no one had come near the vault, so he hadn’t given it up.
That meant that there was no one alive who could open the vault, so we would have to break in and hope the self-destruct didn’t work
But, knowing Beatony as I did, it would have been the first thing he made sure to work.
So…
We were up the proverbial Creek. My overtures to various people he had worked with brought up nothing new and verified that everyone hated him equally.
It was the shortest meeting for the project we had. Mangreve was given the job of approaching the vault builders to see if they had kept a back door. It was a possibility but unlikely.
My suggestion was, failing everything, I was going to wait and see if the door opened itself. It was the mother of all Hail Marys, but knowing Beatony as I did, nothing could be ignored.
For the man who thought of everything, he must have devised a day to make his work visible, even in the event of his death.
An hour before the appointed time of the reveal, Beatoney had set up nearly three months before, I sat outside the vault.
In my imagination, the night before, I’d worked through any number of possible scenarios, all of which seemed impossible because he was dead. A dead man can not get up and do stuff.
Then I went through all of the possibilities of what it might be, trying to discard the expensive Atari console type computer and then factor in all of the materials that I’d purchased.
I’d done that once before, trying to work out what it might be, but it wasn’t until the very end that I discovered he had two suppliers, both unknown to each other.
It was just another method of keeping his project results secret.
A half hour later, I was joined by Magreave and the Major General. They had been told I was hanging around the vault door, so they thought they should be there too. All the while, several technicians were studying the blueprints, the manual, the alarm schematics, looking for a way in.
At the appointed time, nothing happened.
Perhaps I’d been wrong about him. Or maybe…
From within, there were a few weird sounds that, if I were to hazard a guess, the door going through an unlocking process.
Five minutes later, the sound of the warning almost drowned out all other responses, an action designed to make people aware of the vault door opening. Getting hit by a hundred tons of metal door was going to hurt.
We stood back beyond the arc and watched the door slowly open. When it had, and the smoke had cleared, another door opened, and then…
…Beatony walked out and stopped, several paces from us.
I think, to a man, we were all just simply gobsmacked, and definitely speechless.
“Great to meet the three of you, finally. I am Augustus Beatony version two. A fully functional, lifelike Android that is faster, stronger, smarter, and able to live, work, and function indefinitely in any circumstances.”
“You do realise Augustus Beatony version one is dead.” I finally found my voice after getting over the initial shock of seeing a perfect replica of Augustus.
He had made a lifelike robot of himself. I’m not sure it was worth the trillion dollars.
“Yes. Unfortunately, but he knew his time was limited and had prepared for it. It’s why I’m here, now, to complete his work.”
“Are you not his work?”
“A small part of it. I have all the knowledge that went into building me so that we can make more and finally start exploring space. Humans can’t survive. We can.”
“So the project…” The Major General found his voice, too.
“Was to build the people and the spaceships to travel into the outer reaches of the galaxy. I have it all in my head.” The robot tapped his head. “Now take me to the briefing, and I will tell everybody how this is going to work.”
“Isn’t there a convention where robots are not supposed to be human-like?” Magreave had finally got over his astonishment.
“And you know the backers didn’t agree with that stipulation. We don’t have time for semantics. The briefing.”
I looked at Magreave and the Major General.
Both shrugged, Magreave saying, “Lifelike Robotics and artificial intelligence. Why am I not surprised?”
“Because this was what they wanted all along,” the Mahor General added. “Super soldiers.”
He turned to Augustus Beatony version two. “We can’t switch you off, can we?”
“Nor destroy me. Not without very serious consequences. Shall we go?”
He warned me, and I realised the truth in that moment. Three days before his disappearance, he said that if anything happened to him, there would be consequences. “You’re in charge now, Magreave. My involvement ended when he stepped out of the vault. May God have mercy on all our souls.”
The devil takes many forms, and our protagonist has met quite a few. In his line of work, there are few opportunities to snatch a little rest and recreation between life-and-death missions.
Coming back from a mandatory rest period, to recover from the worst of disasters that nearly cost him his life, there is time for the mortality aspect to start doing a number in his head.
It is inevitable.
And as inevitable is the slow breaking down of those beliefs in his invincibility.
But worse than that, his handler started to think he was losing his edge, enough to send a backup just in case.
And why does it have to be an enigma wrapped up in a mystery? It’s not as if to say she is there for any other reason than help in the mission, but after getting shot, and taking a cocktail of drugs and alcohol, his mind wanders.
The woman in white, that apparition that appears to be too good to be true, is dancing on the edge of his memory. Who is she? Well, in a moment of finally doing his job, keeping a watchful eye over the conference delegate, a woman from his past, he sees them together, and their chemistry together tells him it is a daughter or a special relative.
It doesn’t explain why the woman in white is there.
Queenstown Gardens are not far from the center of Queenstown. They are just down the hill from where we usually stay at Queenstown Mews.
More often than not we approach the Gardens from the lakeside during our morning walk from the apartment to the coffee shop. You can walk alongside the lake, or walk through the Gardens, which, whether in summer or winter, is a very picturesque walk.
There’s a bowling club, and I’m afraid I will never be that sort of person to take it up (not enough patience) and an Ice Arena, where, in winter I have heard players practicing ice hockey.
I’m sure, at times, ice skating can also be done.
There is a stone bridge to walk across, and in Autumn/Winter the trees can add a splash of color.
There is a large water feature with fountain, and plenty of seating around the edge of the lake, to sit and absorb the tranquility, or to have a picnic.
There are ducks in the pond
and out of the pond
and plenty of grassed areas with flower beds which are more colorful in summer. I have also seen the lawns covered in snow, and the fir trees that line the lake side of the gardens hang heavy with icicles.
I have to say that just writing about Queen Isobel sent shivers down my spine.
At tome my hands were shaking over the keyboard, and I had to try very hard to find the words that might express some of that feeling and felt the despair of never being able to act on it.
In my mind, they were sharing a dance, a waltz, one where they could br together and apart when they could gaze into each other’s eyes.
I could feel that depth of feelings because it’s the same o have with the love of my life who’s been there for nearly 50 years. All it takes is a look, a nuance, a simple touch that sends an electric shock through you.
And how hard it is not to show it when out in public.
It’s why Ruth is perceptive enough to see what there is and clever enough to realise that it was not a threat. Their pact of telling the truth, no matter what, had given her his perspective, what had happened, and what it meant in a world that she could never imagine.
I’m still trying to reconcile those feelings because I’ve never quite experienced anything like it, so I could never say for sure what I would have done in similar circumstances.
Men are usually weak. Perhaps I want this king to be sometimes more than his father, who certainly would have acted on what he would have assumed was an implied offer.
And just to be clear, I never expected there would be weighty moral issues arising in this simple tale of a fourth son rising to be king.
Investigation of crimes doesn’t always go according to plan, nor does the perpetrator get either found or punished.
That was particularly true in my case. The murderer was incredibly careful in not leaving any evidence behind, to the extent that the police could not rule out whether it was a male or a female.
At one stage the police thought I had murdered my own wife though how I could be on a train at the time of the murder was beyond me. I had witnesses and a cast-iron alibi.
The officer in charge was Detective First Grade Gabrielle Walters. She came to me on the day after the murder seeking answers to the usual questions like, when was the last time you saw your wife, did you argue, the neighbors reckon there were heated discussions the day before.
Routine was the word she used.
Her fellow detective was a surly piece of work whose intention was to get answers or, more likely, a confession by any or all means possible. I could sense the raging violence within him. Fortunately, common sense prevailed.
Over the course of the next few weeks, once I’d been cleared of committing the crime, Gabrielle made a point of keeping me informed of the progress.
After three months the updates were more sporadic, and when, for lack of progress, it became a cold case, communication ceased.
But it was not the last I saw of Gabrielle.
The shock of finding Vanessa was more devastating than the fact she was now gone, and those images lived on in the same nightmare that came to visit me every night when I closed my eyes.
For months I was barely functioning, to the extent I had all but lost my job, and quite a few friends, particularly those who were more attached to Vanessa rather than me.
They didn’t understand how it could affect me so much, and since it had not happened to them, my tart replies of ‘you wouldn’t understand’ were met with equally short retorts. Some questioned my sanity, even, for a time, so did I.
No one, it seemed, could understand what it was like, no one except Gabrielle.
She was by her own admission, damaged goods, having been the victim of a similar incident, a boyfriend who turned out to be an awfully bad boy. Her story varied only in she had been made to witness his execution. Her nightmare, in reliving that moment in time, was how she was still alive and, to this day, had no idea why she’d been spared.
It was a story she told me one night, some months after the investigation had been scaled down. I was still looking for the bottom of a bottle and an emotional mess. Perhaps it struck a resonance with her; she’d been there and managed to come out the other side.
What happened become our secret, a once-only night together that meant a great deal to me, and by mutual agreement, it was not spoken of again. It was as if she knew exactly what was required to set me on the path to recovery.
And it had.
Since then, we saw each about once a month in a cafe. I had been surprised to hear from her again shortly after that eventful night when she called to set it up, ostensibly for her to provide me with any updates on the case, but perhaps we had, after that unspoken night, formed a closer bond than either of us wanted to admit.
We generally talked for hours over wine, then dinner and coffee. It took a while for me to realize that all she had was her work, personal relationships were nigh on impossible in a job that left little or no spare time for anything else.
She’d always said that if I had any questions or problems about the case, or if there was anything that might come to me that might be relevant, even after all this time, all I had to do was call her.
I wondered if this text message was in that category. I was certain it would interest the police and I had no doubt they could trace the message’s origin, but there was that tiny degree of doubt, about whether or not I could trust her to tell me what the message meant.
I reached for the phone then put it back down again. I’d think about it and decide tomorrow.
You take the gondola up to the Skyline and get some of the most amazing views.
Below is a photo of The Remarkables, one of several ski resorts near Queenstown.
You can see the winding road going up the mountainside. We have made this trip several times and it is particularly frightening in winter when chains are required.
In the other direction, heading towards Kingston, the views of the mountains and the lake are equally as magnificent.
Or manage to capture a photo of the Earnslaw making its way across the lake towards Walter Peak Farm. It seems almost like a miniature toy.
There’s something to be said for a story that starts like a James Bond movie, throwing you straight in the deep end, a perfect way of getting to know the main character, David, or is that Alistair?
A retired spy, well not so much a spy as a retired errand boy, David’s rather wry description of his talents, and a woman that most men would give their left arm for, not exactly the ideal couple, but there is a spark in a meeting that may or may not have been a setup.
But as the story progressed, the question I kept asking myself was why he’d bother.
And, page after unrelenting page, you find out.
Susan is exactly the sort of woman to pique his interest. Then, inexplicably, she disappears. That might have been the end to it, but Prendergast, that shadowy enigma, David’s ex-boss who loves playing games with real people, gives him an ultimatum, find her or come back to work.
Nothing like an offer that’s a double-edged sword!
A dragon for a mother, a sister he didn’t know about, Susan’s BFF who is not what she seems or a friend indeed, and Susan’s father who, up till David meets her, couldn’t be less interested, his nemesis proves to be the impossible dream, and he’s always just that one step behind.
When the rollercoaster finally came to a halt, and I could start breathing again, it was an ending that was completely unexpected.
The devil takes many forms, and our protagonist has met quite a few. In his line of work, there are few opportunities to snatch a little rest and recreation between life-and-death missions.
Coming back from a mandatory rest period, to recover from the worst of disasters that nearly cost him his life, there is time for the mortality aspect to start doing a number in his head.
It is inevitable.
And as inevitable is the slow breaking down of those beliefs in his invincibility.
But worse than that, his handler started to think he was losing his edge, enough to send a backup just in case.
And why does it have to be an enigma wrapped up in a mystery? It’s not as if to say she is there for any other reason than help in the mission, but after getting shot, and taking a cocktail of drugs and alcohol, his mind wanders.
The woman in white, that apparition that appears to be too good to be true, is dancing on the edge of his memory. Who is she? Well, in a moment of finally doing his job, keeping a watchful eye over the conference delegate, a woman from his past, he sees them together, and their chemistry together tells him it is a daughter or a special relative.
It doesn’t explain why the woman in white is there.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 